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Ed Webb

Saudi Crown Prince Asks: What if a City, But It's a 105-Mile Line - 0 views

earther.gizmodo.com/at-if-a-city-but-it-1846046352

KSA Saudi MBS cities environment future sustainability dystopia opinion

shared by Ed Webb on 14 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Vicious Saudi autocrat Mohamed bin Salman has a new vision for Neom, his plan for a massive, $500 billion, AI-powered, nominally legally independent city-state of the future on the border with Egypt and Jordan. When we last left the crown prince, he had reportedly commissioned 2,300-pages’ worth of proposals from Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Co. and Oliver Wyman boasting of possible amenities like holographic schoolteachers, cloud seeding to create rain, flying taxis, glow-in-the-dark beaches, a giant NASA-built artificial moon, and lots of robots: maids, cage fighters, and dinosaurs.
  • Now Salman has a bold new idea: One of the cities in Neom is a line. A line roughly 105-miles (170-kilometers) long and a five-minute walk wide, to be exact. No, really, it’s a line. The proposed city is a line that stretches across all of Saudi Arabia. That’s the plan.
  • “With zero cars, zero streets, and zero carbon emissions, you can fulfill all your daily requirements within a five minute walk,” the crown prince continued. “And you can travel from end to end within 20 minutes.”AdvertisementThe end-to-end in 20 minutes boast likely refers to some form of mass transit that doesn’t yet exist. That works out to a transit system running at about 317 mph (510 kph). That would be much faster than Japan’s famous Shinkansen train network, which is capped at 200 mph (321 kph). Some Japanese rail companies have tested maglev trains that have gone up to 373 mph (600 kph), though it’s nowhere near ready for primetime.
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  • According to Bloomberg, Saudi officials project the Line will cost around $100-$200 billion of the $500 billion planned to be spent on Neom and will have a population of 1 million with 380,000 jobs by the year 2030. It will have one of the biggest airports in the world for some reason, which seems like a strange addition to a supposedly climate-friendly city.
  • The site also makes numerous hand wavy and vaguely menacing claims, including that “all businesses and communities” will have “over 90%” of their data processed by AI and robots:
  • Don’t pay attention to Saudi war crimes in Yemen, the prince’s brutal crackdowns on dissent, the hit squad that tortured journalist Jamal Khashoggi to death, and the other habitual human rights abuses that allow the Saudi monarchy to remain in power. Also, ignore that obstacles facing Neom include budgetary constraints, the forced eviction of tens of thousands of existing residents such as the Huwaitat tribe, coronavirus and oil shock, investor flight over human rights concerns, and the lingering questions of whether the whole project is a distraction from pressing domestic issues and/or a mirage conjured up by consulting firms pandering to the crown prince’s ego and hungry for lucrative fees. Nevermind you that there are numerous ways we could ensure the cities people already live in are prepared for climate change rather than blowing billions of dollars on a vanity project.
Ed Webb

The Scary Hidden Stressor - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...the-scary-hidden-stressor.html

MENA climate uprisings revolutions prices food agriculture friedman

shared by Ed Webb on 03 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Ed Webb on 03 Mar 13
     
    That rarest of things, an important Tom Friedman column
Ed Webb

Muftah » New World Water: Egypt's Problem of De-Nile - 0 views

muftah.org/t%E2%80%99s-problem-of-de-nile

Egypt water environment opinion

shared by Ed Webb on 30 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Fewer than a thousand miles south of the Egyptian city of Aswan, Ethiopia has begun construction on what is to be the largest hydroelectric dam in East Africa, aptly named the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The ensuing consequences, according to Egypt, would make the Revolution of 2011 a mere blip in the country’s history by comparison. While the dam is unmistakably a massive undertaking, is Egypt simply wringing its hands in overly sensitive histrionics, or is its livelihood genuinely at stake?
  • recent history has shown that the technology exists to allow for the responsible construction of non-environmentally damning infrastructure, while ensuring the flow of water downstream, as seen in transregional bodies of water like the Amazon, the Niger River, and the Mississippi. Yet in this case,  reconciliation remains elusive.
Ed Webb

These Limestone Walls: The Arab Spring and Climate Change: A New Dialogue on Sustainabi... - 0 views

limestonewalls.blogspot.com/...ng-and-climate-change-new.html

climate sustainability Arabs MENA arabspring opinion blog oil energy

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Ed Webb on 17 Jun 11
     
    Dickinson student on US oil dependence
Ed Webb

Can debt relief save the Red Sea's coral reefs? - 0 views

www.newarab.com/...lief-save-red-seas-coral-reefs

COP Egypt Tunisia Jordan environment climate debt analysis opinion Belize

shared by Ed Webb on 20 Dec 22 - No Cached
  • despite contributing little to greenhouse gas emissions, debt-laden developing countries appear likely to suffer the costliest effects of global warming.
  • A landmark deal in Belize may provide a path for the Arab world’s poorest countries to tackle these vexing challenges in tandem, combining debt relief with climate change mitigation. The Nature Conservancy, an environmental organisation with global reach, helped Belize obtain over $350 million to service its government debt in exchange for the Central American country dedicating more resources to environmental protection and marine conservation.
  • Beyond the significance of a developing country receiving debt relief for toughening environmental policies, Belize oversees a series of coral reefs whose preservation the Nature Conservancy coded into the historic agreement. Arab countries such as COP27 host Egypt likewise have a number of coral reefs, among them species that have demonstrated impressive resilience against global warming.
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  • A 2019 study found that climate change could cost Egypt as much as 95 percent of its revenue from tourism to the coral reefs, so world powers will likely have to come up with millions or even billions of dollars more. Egypt hardly finds itself alone. In the first half of 2022, the government debt of Jordan—home to its own prized set of coral reefs in the Gulf of Aqaba—reached $41 billion, 88.4 percent of the kingdom’s gross domestic product. Meanwhile, in Tunisia, coral reefs near the resort destination of Tabarka appear set to suffer as climate change batters the country and the Tunisian economy falters, depriving authorities of the funds necessary to fund marine conservation.
  • saving Egypt’s coral reefs will require greater action, likely from world powers
  • pairing debt relief with marine conservation, as well as more general measures for environmental protection and climate change mitigation, a boon for Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, and other coral-rich countries in the Arab world
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